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Thursday, November 24, 2016

Word Building

Word building is a research-based strategy that has been proven to be highly effective in teaching children to decode and blend individual sounds in words. Manipulating sounds enables students to become familiar with the patterns of sounds in words.

Through the years, I have worked very hard, creating activities that my students can use independently, to help them practice this important skill, as often as possible.

And with all these word building activities that I have, you'd think I would be satisfied! LOL! But, recently, I had a reason to go back to the drawing board, and create one more building words pack!I was working with some first graders, who were having difficulty reading words with blends and digraphs. They could read some of them in isolation, but were very unsure of themselves when reading the words in the context of a sentence. They said the words were just too long.So, we worked on building CVC words with letter tiles and then replacing the first letter with a blend. I sat and came up with some CVC words that could become longer words when you added a blend at the beginning. They built the words with the letter tiles, and then wrote the words, and then read the words, and we repeated this for awhile until they realized that reading words with blends wasn't so hard!While we were working together, I kept thinking, "Wouldn't it be nice to have some building words activity sheets already made, where you could add blends to CVC words and not only read and write the words in isolation, but read the words in the context of a sentence?"And, that is how this new pack evolved!

Building Words With Blends and Digraphs enables students to build words, beginning with an easy to read word, so they feel confident and successful from the start. Students build the word in the box,

then change the first letter, replacing it with a blend (or digraph),

and read and write the new word on the line.

Then, they read a sentence, and highlight both of the words they built.

Each of the 8 blends activity sheets begins with a CVC word or a word where the final consonant is doubled. This systematic, direct approach, really helped these students learn to confidently decode and blend individual sounds in words and become familiar with the patterns of sounds in words.They are great as a station activity or small group activity. I love to use them during RTI and for homework, as well.Here's an example of building words with digraphs.

All of the 8 digraphs activity sheets begin with a CVC, CVCe, or CVCC word. Students change one letter and replace it with a beginning or ending digraph (ch, ph, sh, th, wh, ck, gh, kn, ll, ng, tch, wr, zz) to make a whole new word.I also included 2 building words with blends and digraphs activity sheets. Each sheet begins with a CVCC, CCVC, or CCVCC word. Students change a blend to a digraph or a digraph to a blend, to make a whole new word.Each activity sheet includes the exact letter tiles needed to build the words on the page. You can print a set of letters for each student, or print a few sets on different colored copy paper and store them in separate Ziploc baggies. I recommend printing them in different colors so the sets don't get mixed up. You can save the letters to use year after year.I also included a page with all 26 lower case letters and a page with all 26 capital letters. You can print a few sets on different colored copy paper and store them in Ziploc baggies. This way, you don't need to print a new set of letters for each activity sheet.If you would prefer not to print any letters, you can use letter tiles instead.

Click here to read a blog post I wrote, which includes visuals of how I store my letters.If you are interested in these building words activity sheets, you can find them here, or by clicking the image below.